Ken Livingstone says Tories should 'burn in hell for all eternity'

I’ve been away doing the day job, so I’ve only just caught Ken’s latest outburst. At a meeting in Hammersmith and Fulham earlier this week, Labour’s cuddly old charmer told one H&F councillor, Peter Graham, that if there was “any justice,” he and all his 30 Tory colleagues would “burn in hell and your flesh will be flayed [by] demons for all eternity.”

And what has consigned these spawn of Satan to Ken’s fiery furnace? Well, it seems that they are proposing to redevelop a council estate. How good it is to know that someone aspiring to lead us has such a finely-developed sense of proportion.

Ken still rather touchingly sees himself as the “serious” candidate. But in the last five months alone, he’s called Boris Johnson’s chief of staff a war criminal, compared Boris himself to Hitler and confessed (voluntarily!) to his own role as chief sperm donor and stud stallion to the free-thinking women of North London. (Anyone who voted for Boris would also “burn forever,” you might remember.)

The only demons here are those in Ken’s own head. And the only thing burning right now is surely his election campaign. It’s a meltdown, and it’s starting to feel almost unkind to talk about it.

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I am senior correspondent for The Sunday Times, previously at the Telegraph, the London Evening Standard, and the BBC's Today programme. I'm a winner or nominee of various awards, including the Paul Foot Award, the Orwell Prize, Amnesty International Media Awards, British Journalism Awards and Foreign Correspondent of the Year and Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards (winner 2008, nominee 2015).

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